Precarious
by snowandstarlight
Summary: Sequel to "Insatiable". The newest Guardians return to their (relatively) normal high school lives after completing the task assigned to them by the elders of Candracar. But is the threat really gone?


I'm back! I can't promise weekly updates at the moment; the rest of this month is going to be pretty busy for me. But I'll be writing whenever I can.

* * *

"Since you didn't bother to set me, this is your own fault," a nasally voice said right in her ear. "But you're going to be late for school."

Isobel shot up in her bed, blankets falling around her waist. Her heart was pounding—that last part of her dream had almost seemed real, like there was actually someone talking next to her head.

She glanced at the clock on her bedside table and her rapid heartbeat almost came to a complete stop. It was 7:13 and she had less than a half hour to get up and get to school. How had her mom not woken her up? How had—

"I told you," the voice said smugly.

Isobel jumped backwards, nearly falling off her bed.

"I'll make this easy for you," the voice said in a tone that made Isobel think that its source was rolling her eyes. "I'm the one talking. Me, right here on the table."

Very slowly, she crawled forward across her mattress until she was only inches away from the little white box. Odd how she had never noticed the two round speakers on either side of the display looked like eyes. "My alarm clock?"

The clock gave a long-suffering sort of sigh. "If you must. I prefer Nancy."

This could not possibly be real. "Nancy," Isobel said flatly. "My talking alarm clock wants to be called Nancy."

"Isobel!"

This voice came from the doorway and was much more familiar. Isobel turned to see her mother, who was still in pajamas and looked very frazzled. "I'm so sorry, I just woke up," she said. "You need to get dressed right away!"

Isobel took another look at the alarm clock and then climbed out of bed. "Right," she said. "I'll be quick."

"You'll have to be."

Isobel jumped again but her mother had no reaction to the disembodied voice. "She can't hear me," the clock said. "Only you."

Oh good, she really was delusional. "I'll be right down, Mom," she promised, ushering her mom out of the room. Isobel turned around and slid down the door to bury her face in her knees. Okay, so her alarm clock was talking to her. It wasn't the weirdest thing that had happened in her life lately.

Isobel lifted her head, thinking of the Heart. In a moment the crystal was floating above her outstretched palm. It was clear now, but at other times it would flare with the light that represented her magic.

Magic that she apparently did have, despite her earlier misgivings. Jon had appeared on her street a few days after New Years with a book about the Keepers of the Heart who had come before her. The book hadn't been very specific about what her powers could do—it was mostly described as pure energy but sometimes sounded like lightning. Apparently one of those former Keepers had even killed with it. Isobel shuddered at the thought.

Still, she hadn't managed to actually use any of these supposed powers yet. Until now. If her alarm clock was talking to her, that had to have something to do with her magic. Right?

* * *

Isobel found Jon right before lunch. He was busy filling his bag with books from his locker and didn't look up until she was right next to him.

"Jon," she said without preamble, "my cell phone is talking to me." That had started in the car on the way over. Apparently Nancy wasn't the only object that had suddenly developed a personality. 'Kristen' had informed her gently that checking her phone at a red light still technically counted as texting and driving (which she would never _really_ do, obviously. She wasn't stupid. What did cell phones know about it anyway?)

He blinked at her. "Are they not supposed to do that?"

Right. What would the guy from another world know about cell phones? But he was the only one who had any access to information about her powers. She figured it might have come up at some point. "Not like this!" She shook her phone at him.

"I really wish you would stop that," the phone said.

Isobel groaned in frustration. At least Kristen had a more pleasant voice than Nancy, although that seemed a very small favor at the moment.

Jon shut his locker and leaned back against it. "So that's not normal?"

She looked up from the phone. "You heard that?" But her mom hadn't heard the alarm clock. Then again, her mom was neither a Guardian nor a… well, whatever Jon was. He looked human enough but he _did _come from another world.

"Of course he did," Kristen said.

Well that was good to know. On the bright side, she wasn't delusional. "No," she said to Jon. "This is not at all normal."

"Is it," he lowered his voice, bending closer so that she could still hear him, "a Guardian ability?"

Isobel shrugged. "I think it's one of mine," she said. "The book didn't mention it, but it's kind of old." Someone writing on vellum with a quill definitely didn't have electricity at all, let alone a cell phone.

The bell rang and the hallway flooded with motion. Lockers slammed all along the wall and there was a mass exodus towards the double doors at the end of the hall.

Isobel slipped her phone into the top pocket of her backpack and the two of them followed the crowd. The other girls would save her a seat, and Jon was usually welcome with the soccer team. He had taken a liking to the sport and even though he had missed the season of his one and only year in high school, he played pick up games with them frequently.

She wondered if they played something similar in his world. Clearly he did something athletic. Isobel snuck a glance at the boy next to her. He was tall and broad-shouldered, the sleeves of his maroon sweater pushed up to reveal muscled forearms. Yes, he definitely did some form of physical activity.

When she looked up again her eyes met his. Isobel turned away quickly, her face flushing. "Um," she said, trying to think of some way to distract him. Her eyes landed on the poster for the upcoming basketball game, the last one before finals. "So are you going to come to the game?"

He shrugged. "I might."

Isobel wasn't sure if he had seen any basketball. It was different from soccer, but it was fast-paced and fun to watch. "You should," she said. "Our team's good this year and the games are usually pretty exciting."

"Are you going?" he asked as the reached the cafeteria.

She gave him an odd look. "Of course," she said. "Me and Marlie cheer, remember? We go to every game."

He was already scanning the room for his usual table. "Right," he said, sounding distracted.

"See you later." She left him to his searching and found her own table easily. Marlie was telling a story to an eagerly attentive Cara and Anna had her head bent over a notebook as took bites from a turkey sandwich.

Isobel sat down, dumping her backpack on the chair next to her. "Guys, something happened."

Marlie broke off her story, turning towards Isobel with wide eyes. "Are those creepy guys back?"

"No, nothing bad," Isobel said. At least, in the grand scheme of things. She fished her phone out of her backpack. "I think I finally have a power. But it's weird."

She put the phone down in front of her. "Alright, Kristen."

"Who's—?"

Before Cara could finish her question, the phone spoke up, the screen lighting with the cadence of her words. "Hello, Guardians."

"Did your phone just say hello?" Grace asked. She had just gotten to lunch and she stood at the end of the table, hugging a stack of books to her chest. Her eyes were wide.

"I did," the phone said.

There was a long moment of silence as everyone blinked down at the suddenly verbose little rectangle.

Cara picked it up, turning it over in her hand as if the answer to this was written somewhere on its surface. "Is it just your phone?"

"I think it's anything electronic," Isobel said. She pushed back her chair and let her chin rest on her folded arms. "My alarm clock talks too. I haven't tried anything else."

Cara put the phone back down. "It's… kind of useless, isn't it?"

And there was the issue. Isobel finally had a power, finally wasn't just a pair of wings and a skimpy outfit, and it was completely useless. Unless she could somehow convince nearby electronics to defend her from an attacker, there was nothing she could do with this ability.

"Who are you calling—?" Isobel cut off the phone's tirade by tucking it back into her backpack. She pulled out her own lunch and started picking apart the soft bread of her peanut butter and banana sandwich.

There had to be something else that she could do.

* * *

"I'm home!" she called as the garage door shut behind her. Usually at this time her mom was on the couch watching her favorite soap opera, but today both the kitchen and family room were empty.

Isobel dumped her backpack on the kitchen island and went searching for her family. There was no one on the first floor at all, which left upstairs. She found her mom in her parents' room, shrugging on her coat.

"Oh hello sweetheart," she said. "We're leaving now for parent-teacher conferences."

This answered Isobel's unspoken question. Usually her parents would go to the later session since her dad would be at work, but apparently he wasn't today.

She followed them back downstairs, taking a seat at the counter while her mom went through her purse.

"We'll be back in two hours or so," she said distractedly. "And we'll pick up something for dinner on the way home." Having found whatever she had been searching for, she zipped up the bag and planted a kiss on her daughter's head.

Isobel didn't move from the counter until the garage door shut behind her parents. She was alone in the house now—Matt was at basketball practice and he wouldn't be home until after her parents.

She slid off her seat and padded over to the refrigerator. Her sweet tooth had come from both of her parents and their house was constantly stocked with cookies of some kind. Their current favorites were little black and white cookies that tasted better cold.

Isobel contemplated the box for a long moment, remembering the pinch of her cheer skirt at their last game. With a sigh, she shut the door hard.

"Ouch!" the fridge protested in a deep male voice.

This was going to get old fast.

She took a seat again, kicking at the wood of her chair. Keeper of the Heart was quite a title for someone who could do nothing but talk to appliances.

The fact that she was alone occurred to Isobel for a second time. Maybe this was the time to figure out what else she could do.

Ten minutes later, she stood in the furnace room in the basement. It was the only place in the house that she could think of where any potential damage she did would go unnoticed, as it was mostly used to store random items like old pieces of luggage and the Christmas decorations that had recently been packed away.

All she had to do was avoid destroying the furnace.

Maybe it was the fact that she had been using her powers, in some capacity, all day, but Isobel could feel the magic jumping beneath her skin. It hardly took any concentration to make the crystal appear in the palm of her hand and to transform into her alternate self—taller and thinner and with the appearance, at least, of a confidence that her "normal" self lacked.

Isobel grinned down at the toes of her purple boots, which looked very out of place against the concrete floor.

Her life was kind of hard to believe at times.

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and reached for the magic that she felt inside her. She had seen it in her very blood—although that particular memory was not a pleasant one—and all she had to do now was push it out somehow.

But she didn't have an element, like her friends did. It was perfectly obvious what it meant to have power over fire or water. So where did that leave her?

She pictured the light that surrounded her when she transformed. It was fuchsia—vivid, definitely, but not very informative about what exactly her power was.

The answer came to her quickly. _Energy_. Beneath it all, beneath fire and water and wind and earth, there was energy. And that was how she brought them all together. That was how she could talk to her phone and her alarm clock, which relied on energy to function.

Her palms were growing warm, like she was holding them over a lit candle. She hadn't realized that her hands were in fists, and she uncurled her fingers.

The power that had been building up in her hands was released with such sudden force that it flung her into the shelf behind her. Isobel's eyes flew open and she rubbed the back of her head where it had hit one of the supports. There, right in the middle of the floor, was a scorch mark.

She scrambled to her feet. The mark had definitely been made by her—the tendrils of smoke that rose from its edges were distinctly pink.

Well, she would definitely have to find some way to hide that before her parents came home. Isobel clasped her hands around the Heart, feeling the magic leave her. Then she got to work, shifting furniture as innocuously as possible until the scorching was hidden.

Still, she couldn't help but smile.

* * *

As always, thank you for reading, and I'd love to hear any comments you have!


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